1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing unit, a printing control unit and a control method thereof, and a storage medium and a control program thereof. More particularly, the invention relates to a control method generating printing data for a document in which paper sizes are mixed and a printer driver program in an information processing unit such as a personal computer in which a control program is executed, and a printing control unit such as a printer or a printer controller.
2. Description of the Related Art
When document data of mixed paper sizes are entered from an application executed on a host computer, and a printer driver outputs printing data on the basis of the entered document data, it is the conventional practice that the printer driver outputs the document data entered from the application, respectively in units of page in a specified paper size, and generates printing data to match with the paper sizes.
In an image processing unit having a finishing function of a staple or a puncher, an image processing unit decides the direction of images in the next and subsequent pages, as to the document data to be printed, from a direction of the top page of a document (landscape/portrait) and a paper size, with reference to a binding position for the top page, and outputs the same by appropriately turning the same.
However, the above-mentioned conventional technique is considered to have the following inconveniences.
In a printing control unit receiving printing data and causing a printing section to print the received data, when sequentially processing printing data for which different kinds of paper are mixed, it is possible to accomplish printing processing if these kinds of paper are mounted on paper feed cassettes. The user usually selects “automatic” as a paper feed pointing setting 1501 as in FIG. 15 showing the print setting of a printer driver. By confirming this setting, the printing control unit would automatically selects a paper feeding point (paper feed cassette) containing sheets of paper having a paper size matching with a paper size specified by the application. In the printing control unit, however, when “automatic” is selected to specify a paper feeding point in the print setting of the printer driver, and when the paper size for the printing data of the first page placeable differently such as A4, a problem exists in that it is impossible to determine which of longitudinally placed paper or laterally placed paper is to be fed.
More specifically, when a cassette 1 contains laterally placed A4 paper (fed in the shorter side direction), whereas a cassette 2 contains longitudinally placed A4 paper (fed in the longer side direction), and the setting on an operating panel of the printing control unit is such that the cassette 1 takes priority over the cassette 2, or when the longitudinally placed A4 paper is exhausted, and the laterally placed A4 paper remains in the cassette, specification of the A4 paper size for the first page results in selection of the laterally placed A4 paper, thus leading to paper feed in the shorter side direction. In this case, if A3 sheets are mixed in any of the following pages, the laterally placed A3 paper is fed and printed (in the shorter side direction). Therefore, even when paper is expected by the user to be fed as represented by 401 in FIG. 4, the paper is actually fed as represented by 402.
When binding along the shorter side (top) of A4 paper is specified for the top page, the printing control unit can recognize feeding of the longitudinally placed A4 paper in the longer side direction, but cannot recognize whether or not A3 paper is contained in any of the following pages. It is therefore impossible to recognize whether or not the image of the A4 paper of the top page is to be turned by 180°. This may sometimes lead to paper delivery as represented by 401 in FIG. 4 even when the user expects the paper to be delivered as represented by 403 in FIG. 4.
When determining the paper to be fed, the direction thereof, and the image drawing direction of the next and subsequent pages from the direction and the size of the top page of the printing data in the printing control unit, a problem is presented in that different sizes or pieces of information between pages 1 and 50 lead to different output results between printing of a document of 100 pages from pages 1 through 100, on the one hand, and partially printing the same document from pages 50 through 100, on the other hand.